The Jump

by Cole, Martina

  ‘Unlock him.’

  The screw nearest Ricky unlocked both feet and hand chains and Ricky, standing with difficulty, made his way over to the doors. Outside, the men all looked at him in shock.

  ‘Who the fucking hell’s that? Where’s Georgio?’

  Ricky sighed heavily. ‘Give me a lift, man. I’ll make my own way after that, OK?’

  Eric, not sure what to do for the first time in his life, heard Jonnie H. say to the black man: ‘Was you the only one taken out? Was anyone else to go?’

  Ricky shook his head. ‘Let’s get going, man. I’ll tell you all about it once it’s quiet, OK? The filth won’t be long coming, you can bet your bottom dollar one of this lot’s got a car phone.’

  He pointed at the lines of cars and next thing he knew he was on the back of a motorbike and they were bumping over the ploughed field that took them past the Devil’s Bridge and to the chop. Just as the police arrived on the scene, sirens wailing and faces red with embarrassment.

  As they approached the footbridge for the chop, the police gained on them. Jumping off the bikes, the men pulled out handguns and shot at the police cars’ tyres. All the policemen dropped down in their seats, fearful of the consequences if they got out. They watched as the six men ran over the footbridge, and called in on their car radios for more assistance and to give as much information as they could. They could not even see what cars the villains were getting into because of the position of the bridge itself.

  Freddie Carver took one look at the man with Eric and said: ‘Who the fucking hell is that?’ Rolling his eyes heavenwards, Eric was removing his overalls and jumper and trying to get changed quick enough to get away and find out what the hell was going on. The men were throwing the overalls into the boots of the cars.

  Jonnie H. shouted across at Eric: ‘What are you going to do with him?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know yet. You’d better come with me.’ He pushed Ricky into the front seat of a motor, and down into the footrest out of the way, then he got in the back of the Cosworth with Jonnie H. Harry pulled away and they drove sedately along the country road so as not to bring any attention to themselves.

  Tidying up his shirt, Eric put on a tie and slipped on a suit jacket. Without the balaclava and overalls, both men looked like normal businessmen on their way home from work. Jonnie H., shrugging on a tweed jacket and a red tie, looked at the huge black man crouched in the footrest and shook his head sagely.

  ‘This is going to cause untold hag, Eric - you do realise that, don’t you?’

  Eric laughed. ‘What a fucking turn-out! Who are you, mate - and where the fuck is Georgio Brunos?’

  Ricky, smiling widely at his piece of good luck, said: ‘Let’s get on our way and then I’ll tell you what happened. ’

  Donna and Carol were still chuckling when they pulled away from the garages in the Astra van.

  ‘Did you see them two run? I’d have thought my Davey would have had more sense than to fall for that one. There’s always Old Bill round there. It’s a shithole of a place.’

  Donna smirked. ‘I loved seeing that Paddy shitting himself though. I hate him now. To think I was going to give him a percentage of the building for all his help! God, I must have been so naive, so stupid!’ Her voice trailed off.

  Carol, placing a hand over hers on the steering wheel, said lightly: ‘We’re all stupid where blokes are concerned. It just takes us a while to suss that out.’

  Then she laughed.

  ‘What are we going to do with all that dosh, eh? What I couldn’t do with a few grand of that now I ain’t got Davey hanging round my neck!’

  Donna looked at Carol seriously and said, ‘Are you really finished with him, Carol? Really, truly finished with him?’

  Carol nodded. ‘Oh, yes. I put up with a lot from him over the years. Well, you already know that. But those books . . . they killed anything I felt for him. I could never look at him again without seeing those kids.’

  ‘You should have seen them in Sri Lanka. It made me feel sick to think that they were there, being abused and used, and I was living off the proceeds.’

  Carol bit on her lip. ‘We all were, darlin’,’ she said. ‘Not just you. I should have guessed something like that was going on, but you don’t, do you? You trust people, and you trust them completely. I knew my Davey ducked and dived, I just didn’t think he ducked and dived like that. Makes you wonder what else the fuckers were up to.’

  Donna turned off the A13 towards her house.

  ‘I should have known, too. Look at Talkto. Stephen was in over his head there.’

  ‘Is he really dead, Donna?’

  She nodded vigorously.

  ‘Oh yes, he’s dead all right, or should be by now - and do you know something, Carol? I don’t really care. I know that sounds terrible but it’s the truth. He didn’t deserve to live, none of them do really. Georgio included. Once he’s back in nick, me and Alan Cox will be hounded. I might use my half of that money to go somewhere. What will you do with yours?’

  Carol’s face was a picture of shock and astonishment.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course I am. That wasn’t Georgio’s to take anyway. And let’s face it, we can’t give it back, can we? So you might as well have half and I’ll use mine to get away from here. From everything.’

  ‘How much is there?’

  ‘Nearly three-quarters of a million pounds.’

  ‘Jesus wept! Are you sure about this?’

  Donna smiled grimly. ‘Sure as I’ve ever been. Take it, start up another business, Carol. The notes are untraceable - that’s why Georgio wanted it. You can spend it where the hell you like, love.’

  Carol grinned, showing off her white teeth. ‘You’re getting to be a right villain!’

  Donna shrugged. ‘Well, I had a good teacher, didn’t I?’

  Bunty was sitting in her lounge reading a magazine when she heard the sound of a car on her drive.

  She carried on reading, waiting for the inevitable knock. Bunty never opened a door before it was knocked on at least twice - it was part of her so-called image. People felt as if she was too busy to see them when she did that. It made her trivial little life worth leading to give the impression of busy-ness and authority, as if the world would stop turning without her.

  When the knock didn’t come, she put down her magazine and went over to the window. Her scream brought Harry from the kitchen, sandwich still in hand and linen napkin still tucked under his ample chin.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter, woman? Mrs Jenkins nearly sliced off her bleeding hand!’

  ‘Look, Harry! Look what they’re doing!’

  He went to the window and what he saw gave him such a shock that he dropped his sandwich on to the damask covering of the chair beside him.

  Then they were both rushing to the front door, fighting one another to get there first.

  Flinging it open, Bunty shouted, ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

  Donna gave her a big smile. ‘I’m making a delivery, Bunty. Sorry it’s not a Porsche. But this lot is where it should have been from day one!’

  Piled on the drive were the books and magazines from the lock-up garage. Tipped out of their cardboard boxes, they were strewn everywhere, the wind picking up the magazines and distributing them haphazardly around the garden.

  ‘By the way, I’m burning the floppy discs, Harry. I think that’s the best thing, don’t you? Oh, and before I go, you two had better get cleared up here. I’ve phoned the Standard, Recorder and Sun. They’ll be here in no time. Child porn is big news, isn’t it? Especially for the tabloids. And think what the local papers will make of it, you a magistrate and all!’

  Carol and Donna got into the Astra van and watched Bunty as she began laying into Harry with her tongue.

  Carol grinned. ‘Be the first time Bunty ever did manual work in her life, eh?’

  Donna watched the two of them in the van’s mirror as s
he drove away.

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ she said. ‘Now let’s get home and see what else the day brings us, shall we?’

  Eric and Jonnie H. were with Alan Cox and Anthony Calder at Eric’s safe house in Ilford. The four men were listening in silence to the huge black man sitting before them.

  ‘Listen, before I speak, I have to have some kind of assurance that what I tell you won’t come back on me?’

  Anthony Calder said levelly, ‘Just tell us the truth. We can get the buzz from inside so don’t worry about lying to us, all right?’

  He poured Ricky out another large white rum and the four men sat back to listen.

  ‘Georgio came to me to set up the nonces, right? I went along with him on the proviso that I could take out Donald Lewis at the same time. I wanted the big spot, I was sick of Lewis and his henchmen. I was doing a big one and didn’t want to do it with Lewis hanging round my neck, you understand that?’

  The men nodded.

  ‘Well, this morning it all went off at ten a.m. We done two paedophiles, Hall and Denning. They were the two who turned Queen’s evidence in that big trial a few months ago. You know, killing all the kids and that? So anyway, Georgio found out who they were and that was what he asked me to get him a weapon for. I asked why he wanted the weapon and he told me. That’s when we cooked up the scam between us. I knew he was having hassle off of Lewis over money, the whole Wing knew that, so it seemed logical for the two of us to team up. We did. Well, four men died this morning.’

  ‘There ain’t been a dicky bird on the News yet, but there wouldn’t be, would there? They’ll keep a lid on it until they can announce that they’ve sorted it all out. There’s been nothing about the jump either. If there was I’d have had a call by now.’

  Ricky nodded at Alan and continued. ‘It was pandemonium, man. The Wing went crazy. Like, one guy was decapitated. There’s this nutter, a schiz called Eros. He’s had to have this guy’s head forcibly removed from his arms. It was fucking weird man, really weird. Like it wasn’t really happening. It was like we all got caught up in the violence, you know? You had to be there to see it.

  ‘Georgio took out Lewis and I took out Lewis’s minder, and then it all seemed to die down. The screws were in, we had made our point: No nonces in with the lifers. And then it was all quiet again. We were in a state of shock really at what we had done. I mean, you never seen blood like it. We were like animals, man. Like we all caught everyone else’s excitement.’

  He looked at the men as he spoke and Eric nodded in agreement. ‘I know what you mean, I’ve seen it happen before in wartime.’

  ‘Anyway, when we were all cornered by the screws in the rec room, in comes the Governor, Hanningfield. A prize prick if ever there was one. He was surrounded by his armed men and thought he was fucking something else, you know? Looking down his nose at us. We could see that the dead men had frightened him, shocked him, but he acted like he was the big king pin.

  ‘Well, Georgio shit him up, man, Georgio shit up the Governor! You should have seen Hanningfield’s face when the bucket of slops hit him. It was a picture, it was pure genius. I realise now this was to get on the laydown and meet with you lot. And that’s what would have happened, except it all went wrong for him.’

  Alan sipped at his brandy and demanded, ‘How? What went wrong?’

  ‘There’s a TV called Sadie. Georgio was friendly with her - nothing funny, I think Sadie had stayed in her cell throughout the riot. No one even realised that she wasn’t there, to be honest. It all happened so fast, you know? Anyway, as I was saying, as we were all being led out, they were locking us up in our cells - I expect they were sorting out who were the ringleaders and whether to remove them - when Sadie shouts out: “Georgio was in with Hall and Denning! He’s part of their business!”

  ‘No one took any notice. If Georgio had had any sense he would have ignored it. Instead he went crazy, man! And Sadie, this little queer Sadie, she fucking stabbed him, man, right through the heart! She went fucking loopy. I ran to help Georgio but they thought I was going to start the riot again and the armed screws nabbed me. I was off on a GOAD, and well, you know the rest. I think Sadie was put under sedation, she was off her head. There’s no way they could have moved her with me.’

  The four men were silent then Alan said, ‘Is he dead?’

  Ricky shrugged enormous shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. They put the others in the cells at gun-point, and then I was removed and blamed for being the leader, I suppose because Brunos was out of the way.’

  He nodded at Eric and said, ‘Thanks for taking me, man. I appreciate it.’

  Eric shook his head in wonderment.

  ‘You’re welcome. We’d come for a jump and you were there. Call it fate! Now, who wants another drink while we sort out what the fuck happened here, and more importantly, who’s going to pay all our bills?’

  Donna and Carol arrived home to find Mario waiting with Dolly in the kitchen.

  ‘Hello, Mario, what brings you here?’

  He took in their dirty hands and clothes and Carol’s flushed face and said, ‘Stephen died on holiday, Donna. He drowned. My mum sent me over to give you the news.’

  Donna stared at Mario for a few seconds before saying, ‘Make a pot of tea for Mario, Dolly. Me and Carol are going up to shower and change, OK? We won’t be long.’

  Upstairs Donna listened to Carol on the phone to her elder daughter, asking her to look after Jamie until she got home. Then they looked at one another and shook their heads.

  ‘Let’s get showered and listen to the News on the radio, Carol. I need to know what the hell is going on with Georgio before I can make my next move. I’ve been frightened to listen to the news today. Once I find out the score, I can make my decision.’

  Carol began to take off her clothes.

  ‘What about Alan Cox?’ she suggested. ‘Why don’t you ring him?’

  Donna grimaced. ‘Alan Cox is the last person I want to talk to at the moment.’

  Already feeling better at the thought of a hot shower, Carol said saucily, ‘I wouldn’t want to talk to that one either love. I’d be too busy doing other things with him!’

  Donna laughed gently. ‘That’s the trouble, Carol, I already have.’

  She walked into the bathroom naked and Carol slumped down on the bed and said incredulously: ‘Well, well, well. You are a dark horse, ain’t you?’

  Donna looked over her shoulder and said in a low voice, ‘There’s lots of things you don’t know about me, Carol. There’s an awful lot I don’t know about myself.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Yet.’

  Epilogue

  Donna watched as the bodies of Stephen and Georgio were lowered into the ground. She knew she should be crying, but she was dry-eyed. She could see Maeve being held up by Pa Brunos, the rest of her children around her, waiting for her lead as to what to do next.

  It was funny, Donna reflected, how she seemed to have no feelings any more. Her husband, the big love of her life, was being buried and she felt nothing at all.

  She saw Big Paddy trying to catch her eye and she looked away from him, swallowing down a half-smile. He didn’t frighten her any more, none of them did. She wondered why.

  Davey was trying to attract Carol’s attention. Out of the corner of her mouth, she hissed to Donna: ‘If that ponce don’t leave me alone I’ll knock him into the grave along with your Georgio.’

  Donna felt hysterical laughter well up in her throat; she swallowed it down. Then her attention was drawn towards Milton Hardcastle, the liar of the building sites. He was crying like a baby over Georgio and she wondered at how her husband could have been so loved, yet been so bad. Was he really that good an actor, or was he just caught up in the love of money?

  She instinctively turned her face away from the TV cameras. This was still a big news story. The man murdered by the transvestite, instigator of one of the most violent riots in prison history, was being buried alongside his brother
who had died on holiday. She had nearly laughed out loud on seeing Stephen described as a ‘young up-and-coming businessman’ in the tabloids. They were making the two brothers out to be like Cain and Abel. One too good to be true and the other rotten to the core. They even had Maeve believing it. She had sold her story to the News of the World, giving them photos of the two men as children, describing their childhood.

  Donna shrugged inside her black coat. Good luck to Maeve; let her make some money from them. It seemed fitting somehow.

  The priest was still talking, making the most of his television fame. The Chase cemetery had never been so popular. People had come from all over the East End, hoping for a glimpse of the dead men’s family and friends.

  The worst of it all was, Donna was now a very rich woman; yet she didn’t really want the money. Even the pay-outs from the insurance seemed dirty to her.

  Maeve had refused to allow her to pay for Georgio’s funeral, insisting that it would be paid for by her and Pa. They would bury their two sons together.

  Donna heard the priest’s ‘Amen’ and sighed inwardly.

  Carol stood beside her, together with Dolly, and the three women moved away from the graveside towards the black limousine as if of one mind.

  Alan watched Donna from the other side of the grave-yard and his heart went out to her. He walked to his car and climbed in beside Nick and Albie.

  ‘Well, the dirty deed is done.’

  Nick nodded and watched the mourners as they made their way back to the black limousines.

  ‘Georgio lost out every way in the end, eh?’ Alan said heavily.

  Nick said softly: ‘Poetic justice, really. You can drop me off in Soho, Alan I have a few people to see before I make my way home.’

  Alan started the car and drove away before the three-ring circus started. Already the camera crews were taking shots of everyone, hoping against hope to see a few well-known villains to add colour to their stories.